Introduction to SitePoint’s Peer Review

SitePoint has been the go-to location for generations of developers for over 10 years. Before there was StackOverflow, there were the SitePoint forums – a resource repository by coders for coders. It’s where many of us got our start and came to help others in need – some in HTML and CSS, others in JavaScript, and others still in that magical adventure called Adobe Flash.

Nowadays, SitePoint is one of the world’s most popular online publishers for developers and general web folk. We’ve had many iterations since our forum days, but the word publisher above is what’s important now – we’re not a blog, and posts on our site are not guest blogs. As a publisher, we pay for every post authors write for us. For details on payment, you’d have to talk to the editor responsible for a given channel, but more on that below.

Peer Review

Starting with 2015, and in an effort to improve quality even further, SitePoint started a Github-powered Peer Review program for all draft submissions.

This is not a typical scientific peer review – no detailed reviews need to happen and the editor’s word is still final, but we are trying to gather feedback on certain posts before publishing them.

The peer review system is currently only implemented on the following channels:

If you would like to write for any of the above channels, you must get familiar with the peer review system – there is no way around it. Fear not, it’s far simpler than it sounds. Below you’ll find some resources common to all channels implementing it. Keep in mind that individual channels may have channel specific instructions that supplement those outlined here.

Please note that in order to participate (in any capacity) in a channel that implements peer review you must have a Github account and send your username to the appropriate channel editor (see above list) along with your pitch and/or request to join as a reviewer. It’s important to note that all authors are automatically considered reviewers, because they have access to all content and can comment on it.

When a channel editor invites you to the repository of a channel, you’ll be sent an invite email, but you can also accept the invitation via Github’s UI by going to http://github.com/sitepoint-editors and clicking “View Invitation”: